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NY Times, May 15, 2020
Amazon’s Showdown in France Tests Its Ability to Sidestep Labor
By Liz Alderman and Adam Satariano
PARIS — Workers at Amazon’s six mammoth French warehouses won some
concessions from the company in late March: After hundreds of employees
threatened to walk out unless the company better protected them from the
coronavirus, the internet giant strengthened social distancing measures,
provided masks and hand sanitizer and took employee temperatures.
But that was not enough for workers like Jean-François Bérot, who a few
weeks later felt like his colleagues were still too close for comfort,
putting themselves at risk to fulfill orders for items as trivial as
nail polish.
“People kept coming to work feeling worried about being exposed to a
mortal danger,” said Mr. Bérot, 50, who works at a warehouse south of Paris.
Unlike in the United States, where Amazon has spent years successfully
beating back unionization efforts, Mr. Bérot could do something about
it. He had a union behind him.
Mr. Bérot’s union successfully sued Amazon last month, in what has
become the most prominent labor showdown the retailer has faced since
the coronavirus outbreak. A French court ordered Amazon to stop
delivering “nonessential” items as part of measures to protect worker
health. The company responded by closing its French warehouses and
putting 10,000 employees on paid furlough until at least Monday. On
Wednesday, Amazon said it would include an independent expert in its
review of virus protocols, a concession to unions.
The case, now headed to the French supreme court, tests Amazon’s ability
to sidestep the demands of workers who are fulfilling the surge in
orders the pandemic has produced for Amazon’s business. It is also
emblematic of why Amazon, based in Seattle, has battled to keep unions
out of the company, especially in the United States, its biggest market.
“The only way to push Amazon to action is through confrontation,” said
Jean-François Bérot, a member of the Sud-Solidaires labor
union.Credit...Elliott Verdier for The New York Times
Unions in the United States have made few inroads after years of
campaigns. But in Europe, national labor laws require companies to deal
with them, even if employees aren’t members. With more than 150,000
deaths in Europe from the coronavirus, the groups are leveraging the
crisis to reassert influence and press Amazon harder on workers’ rights.
“The only way to push Amazon to action is through confrontation,” Mr.
Bérot said. “We’re working in conditions that pose a risk to our safety.
Workers’ voices must be heard.”
Amazon defended its response to the virus, saying it had put in place
more than 150 changes at its warehouses, including providing masks,
temperature checks, hand sanitizer, increased time off and higher pay.
It expects to have more than $4 billion of Covid-related expenses in the
current quarter.
“We respect everyone’s right to express themselves, but object to the
irresponsible actions of some labor groups who have spread
misinformation and made false claims about Amazon during this crisis,”
said Stuart Jackson, an Amazon spokesman. “The actions of a few people
do not reflect the views of many — and do not always reflect reality.”
Amazon has not disclosed how many warehouse workers have contracted
Covid-19 in Europe, but cases have been reported in France, Germany,
Italy, Poland and Spain.
The disease has exposed long-simmering challenges Amazon has faced in
the region. In Italy, it has resisted worker demands for years,
including in 2017, when the company initially refused to attend a
government-moderated negotiation with unions over conditions at a
warehouse near Piacenza. In March, as the virus spread, Italian workers
held an 11-day strike until the company added safety policies, including
more time for employees to wash their hands during shifts and the
creation of a health and safety committee.
In Germany, where workers sought stringent social distancing in
warehouses, Amazon is entangled in a seven-year battle against one of
the country’s largest unions, Ver.di, which has fought to negotiate a
collective-bargaining agreement. Spanish unions, which also called for
stronger antivirus measures, have gone on strike during busy holiday
periods in recent years to demand higher wages.
The labor activism hasn’t stopped the company from dominating Europe’s
online retail market.
In France, where the chief executive, Jeff Bezos, inaugurated the
company’s fledgling website in 2000 with a glitzy Parisian bash
featuring 11 party boats moored symbolically in front of the National
Library, Amazon is now the leading online seller.
The company reported $75.5 billion in global sales in the latest
quarter, up 26 percent from a year earlier. In 2019, revenue from its
online store was roughly 32 billion euros in Europe, where it has
websites tailored to many other countries on the continent, too,
including Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. It also
operates warehouses in lower-cost Eastern European countries.
The company’s continued financial success in Europe shows it can coexist
with unions, said Christy Hoffman, the general secretary of the UNI
Global Union, a Swiss-based federation of unions across 150 countries
that helps organize international labor campaigns against Amazon.
She pointed to Spain, where despite a strained relationship, Amazon
worked with local union leaders on new warehouse safeguards to limit the
spread of the virus. In Italy, unions overcame the resistance from
Amazon in 2018 to win increased pay for night work and more consistent
schedules, including some weekends off.
“That is the important lesson,” Ms. Hoffman said. “They are running
relatively smoothly.”
As its legal battle in France drags on, Amazon is tapping its warehouses
in Germany, Italy and Poland to fill orders by French consumers,
minimizing the fallout from the dispute.
Amazon shuttered the French warehouses after a court ruled on April 15
that it hadn’t adequately consulted the employee works council, which
includes union members, on coronavirus safety protocols. Unions also
complained that warehouse employees faced unnecessary health risks
packing items like beauty products and DVDs while the government told
citizens to hunker down for safety.
The court restricted Amazon’s sales to “essential” items and threatened
steep fines for noncompliance, leading Amazon to close the warehouses to
avoid the financial risk.
Amazon lashed out when a French appeals court upheld the ruling, saying
the union lawsuit was “not about safety but rather certain unions
leveraging the process of formal procedural consultation with works
councils for their own agenda.”
The company is appealing those court decisions in France’s Supreme Court.
The episodes in Europe show Amazon will work with unions when required
by law, said Virginia Doellgast, an associate professor at Cornell
University who studies international labor. “They cooperate where they
have to,” she said.
In the United States, Amazon has pushed back against organizers. In
March, the company fired a worker in its Staten Island facility,
Christian Smalls, who organized a protest demanding stronger safety
measures. Amazon has said he was fired for violating a quarantine order
to attend the protest.
Two weeks later, Amazon fired two other employees who had organized an
event for warehouse workers to speak to tech employees about their
conditions.
In France, the temporary warehouse closings have driven a wedge between
unions and some employees fearful of job losses. Around 15,000 people
signed a petition last month urging the reopening of the sites.
Priscilla Soares, 32, a French warehouse employee who started the
campaign, said Amazon addressed safety issues after doing too little
initially, but that unions didn’t take the improvements into account.
She added that unions were “bullied on Facebook” by unhappy employees
who want to return to work. “I don’t think the unions really represent
our interests,” she said. “People say that this is their fault.”
Alessandro Delfanti, an assistant professor at the University of
Toronto, said the economic downturn caused by the pandemic could
strengthen Amazon’s hand by enlarging the pool of people desperate for work.
“This crisis is opening up an even bigger mass of workers they can tap
into,” he said.
For Mr. Bérot, the battle with Amazon reminds him why he became a union
member. He said he was never interested until he sustained
repetitive-stress injuries in his arms and shoulders a few years into
his job.
After returning from disability leave, Mr. Bérot said managers pressed
him to increase productivity. When workers with similar injuries whose
productivity fell were threatened with firing, he said he decided to
join Sud-Solidaires, France’s biggest industrial labor organization, to
advocate for improved work conditions.
When the coronavirus hit, Mr. Bérot said unions’ previous experience
suggested they should demand a comprehensive response. He disputed a
statement by Amazon that the company had worked closely with the
workers’ committee on coronavirus safety plans, saying that when unions
sought stricter sanitary protocols, Amazon listened but didn’t always
incorporate them.
“We’d say, there’s a problem. They’d say, it’s not that bad,” he said.
“That’s how the dialogue is.”
In its statement, Amazon said it has an “open-door policy” with workers
“who are encouraged to push us to be better, and always do.”
While Mr. Bérot is heartened that Amazon will now bring in an
independent expert to assess safety protocols, he said he expected it
would hardly be the last fight unions mount.
“Amazon says it’s safety first,” he said. “But their priority is business.”
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